Season of Change: Baseball, Coal Mining, and a Small Town's Struggle to Beat the Odds - Paperback

A town literally built upon the once booming coal economy, the rise to prominence and eventual decline of West Frankfort, Illinois, tightly parallels that of the coal industry itself. Depicting a town unknowingly on the threshold of the likely end of an era of growth and economic prosperity, Season of Change: Baseball, Coal Mining, and a Small Town's Struggle to Beat the Odds is an engaging and bittersweet account of the rise and fall of the town of West Frankfort and the West Frankfort Cardinals. An intimate and personal depiction of the 1948 Illinois State League champions and the town they called home also takes a swing at the larger social and economic issues that continue to largely shut out efforts to return to the prosperity and potential of the past.

Acclaim for Season of Change:
"Toby Brooks is adding a nostalgic chapter to the literary history of southern Illinois in Season of Change: Baseball, Coal Mining, and a Small Town's Struggle to Beat the Odds. An adept storyteller, Toby brings to life the heartaches and triumphs defining an engrossing period in the life of West Frankfort, Illinois-a city where a deeply ingrained coal mining culture shared the stage, if only for a few years, with a gutsy venture into minor league baseball." Taylor Pensoneau, Illinois author and former president of the Illinois Coal Association